1. Field
A laundry treating apparatus, and more particularly, a laundry treating apparatus having a door for opening and closing a laundry introduction opening of a body is disclosed herein.
2. Background
A laundry treating apparatus may include a laundry washing apparatus, a laundry drying apparatus, or a laundry washing/drying apparatus. In the laundry treating apparatus, a washing process may remove contaminants of laundry by interaction between water and detergent, and a drying process may remove moisture included in laundry by a hot blast supply device provided at the laundry treating apparatus. A general laundry treating apparatus may include a body which forms the appearance of the laundry treating apparatus and has a laundry introduction opening, a laundry accommodation unit or device provided in the body, a driving unit to rotate a drum which constitutes the laundry accommodation unit, and a door to open and close the laundry introduction opening.
In the general laundry treating apparatus, the door may be designed to open and close the laundry introduction opening, and to allow a user to view the laundry accommodation unit therethrough. In this case, an open angle of the door may be restricted due to a limited design of the laundry treating apparatus. In order to solve such a problem, Korean Laid-Open Utility Model No. 20-1999-0029441, etc. has disclosed a structure to open and close a door in a drum-type washing machine with an increased open angle. However, the structure has a degraded appearance due to the quadrangular door and fixing plate of a hinge unit. Further, since the hinge unit has a simple structure, reliability in opening the door or durability of the hinge unit may be lowered.
The case of a concaved-type door having no gap between its outer surface and a front surface of a laundry treating apparatus, the conventional door opening/closing structure may not be applied, because a large open angle should be implemented with a simple appearance of the laundry treating apparatus and an operation reliability should be implemented. Further, in the case of a door asymmetric with a laundry introduction opening (e.g., a circular door having a display unit), a mechanism to open and close the door should be considered. Thus, the present disclosure provides a method capable of enhancing an operation reliability, while maintaining a simple appearance of a laundry treating apparatus.